


White, Red, Fear, Dread

by DisposalUnit



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Ableist Language, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Fear of loss, Finch whump, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M, Medical Care, Mild Gore, Nightmares, Pre-Slash, Rinch if you want it to be, injured!Finch, sutures, worried!Reese, wound care
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-08
Updated: 2015-12-08
Packaged: 2018-05-05 16:58:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5383259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DisposalUnit/pseuds/DisposalUnit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Finch is injured, deep fears surface in Reese's mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	White, Red, Fear, Dread

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone has a better idea for a title, please let me know. (Lol)

If their little clan had team colors, John had mused just that morning, those colors would be clean white, blood red, and far too many shades of gray.

He’d seen a lot of blood in his lifetime. He’d been trained to suppress emotional reactions to the sight, so that he was better prepared to act in a crisis. On a normal day, out in the world, blood didn’t bother him.

Tonight, as he used both hands to press a rapidly-darkening hand-towel against Finch’s back, the sight bothered him a lot.

\---

Their Number, Ross Ward, didn’t have a weapon. The poor dunce was scared for his life. Between the sound of Reese firing off shots at their pursuers and Finch demanding urgently-needed information from him as they took cover in an old storage room, he snapped.

Ward impulsively took out his fear and frustration on Harold, grabbing him by the lapels and shoving him back against a wall.

Ward hadn’t noticed the bent metal brackets that remained bolted to the wall, long after the shelves they’d helped support had been removed. He paid no attention to Finch’s gasp of pain as a sharp prong penetrated his flesh, halfway up his back. Nor did Ward pay any mind to Finch’s grunt as he was brutally punched in the face, or his choked cry as he sank to the floor, the metal ripping a deep gash up his back, finally tearing free from his shoulder as Finch came to a rest below it.

Ward _did_ notice the still-hot muzzle of Reese’s gun pressing into the back of his head.

“Mr. Reese, I’m all right,” Harold choked as he endeavored to stand once again.

But the bright crimson smeared down the wall told John otherwise.

\---

Megan Tillman had arrived in fifteen minutes, which was remarkably fast considering the distance from her apartment to the safehouse.

Paper wrappers and gauze pads now overfilled the wastebasket at her feet, many of the pads soaked through with blood, some still with areas of clean white at the edges.

“You’re a lucky man, Mr. Finch,” she said as she made a complicated maneuver with forceps and a scissor-like needle holder, tying off one more stitch. “If this had gone any deeper, you would have needed surgery.”

Harold’s soft hum of acknowledgement was interrupted by a small gasp as the needle’s pull tugged on an area beyond the effect of the lidocaine injections.

“Sorry.”

“No apologies needed, Dr. Tillman,” Finch replied, his bruising and swollen face partially pressed into the bed upon which he lay prone, a dishtowel-wrapped bag of frozen peas against his black eye. “I’m immensely grateful for your help, as always.”

“The feeling is mutual, as always.” She turned to smile at John, but he didn’t meet her gaze.

From a nearby chair, John stared, miserable, at the wound on Finch’s back. He watched Megan tuck bloody adipose tissue down beneath the edges of the yawning laceration before slipping the shining needle through a section of skin on one side and then through the skin on the other side. A complicated dance of forceps and needle holder-- a bit like tying shoelaces using chopsticks, John thought-- and a square knot was completed, just right. Clip. She made it look easy.  

Most days, John felt that he was skillful enough to make his own job look easy. Today, he had failed. And Finch had been the one to pay for his mistake.

 _He_ was the one who was supposed to get hurt, not Harold. Finch wasn’t supposed to bleed. Finch wasn’t supposed to be torn open with sharp metal.

Harold was supposed to be safe. John _needed_ Finch to be safe.

\---

When Megan had finished suturing and applied a dressing over the length of the wound, she had Finch roll onto his back so that she could take another look at his black eye. Satisfied, she packed up her things. Reese listened to the care instructions she gave, then showed her out and returned to the bedroom with a glass of orange juice.

“Harold?”

Finch moaned softly, unsurprisingly half asleep after the grueling last two days.

“Harold, I need you to drink this.”

Finch knew trying to sit up from his supine position would be an exercise in indignity, so he turned onto his side to take a sip from the offered drinking straw. He paused to blink himself awake, although his left eye was swollen mostly shut and the world was blurry without his now-broken glasses.

“Thank you, John.” Another sip, part of which went down wrong, sending Finch into a coughing fit.

John helped him sit up on the edge of the bed to recover, then busied himself with gathering all the medical trash and taking the full wastebasket into the kitchen. When he returned, he found Finch standing at the dresser, retrieving a clean undershirt.

“Finch, you should be resting. You lost a fair amount of blood.”

“I’ll rest when we have Mr. Ward established in a safe location with a new identity.” He prepared to put the undershirt on over his head, but stopped when he realized this would pull his fresh stitches. An embarrassed sigh. “...Mr. Reese?”

“Ward is safe enough for now,” John said, helping Finch thread his arms through and pulling the shirt down over Finch’s shoulders for him. 

“We can’t leave him in the car trunk all night.”

“Sure we can. People who hurt you don’t get VIP treatment.”

Harold reached for one of the perfectly-pressed shirts hanging in the closet, but his hand wavered, instead finding a steadying grip on the door-frame. John was at his side in an instant.

“I’m all right.”

“Like hell you are.” He took Finch’s arm and led him back to the bed. “Besides blood loss, you had a blow to the head. You need rest.”

“Stop treating me like an invalid. I'm not _that_ pathetic,” Finch spat bitterly.

“You’ve been up for thirty-six hours and you’ve just been injured. Let me help, at least for now.”

Although Finch was strongly disinclined to receive such assistance, he didn’t object further as John helped him lie on his good side, bending his legs at the knee for stability and propping him in place with pillows. “I hate needing help,” he muttered, exhaustion evident.

“I know. And you know how I hate being on the receiving end of it, too.”

Reese went to the kitchen and retrieved a fresh bag of frozen peas, wrapping it in a dishtowel before bringing it back to the bedroom.

Finch had fallen asleep in this short time, and John was glad the older man had thought to remove his belt for comfort before the suturing began.

After putting both bags of peas back in the freezer for later, he found a designer-brand blanket in the linen closet and draped this loosely across Harold before lowering the lights and sitting in the chair nearest his friend.

\---

  He was out of suits. Hadn’t he just picked some up from the dry cleaner? Maybe not. Sighing, John put on a well-worn but comfortable t-shirt and a pair of jeans. It was casual Friday, after all.

Just a block away from the library, John wished he had thought to put on a jacket, at least. It was unseasonably cold that day. A look at the sky and John reconsidered-- The sky was heavy with threatening, dark clouds. Wind tore through his flimsy clothing. It was the season for this. He could feel it in his bones. Every old fracture, every healed crack knew the storm was approaching.

The skies inside the library were no different. Cutting wind blew through the never-ending field of wheat, creating fractals in shifting colors of gold and gray. How had he and Finch ever thought they could tend their lot?

Finch was right where John expected him to be, fixed high above him on a tower of crumbling wooden bookcases. John started climbing, sometimes losing his footing on decaying books as they slid from tilted shelves, their loose pages, printed with endless digits, stolen by the wind. Eventually he made it to to the top, clinging to the uppermost shelves, where he could be at Finch’s side.

“Good morning, Mr. Reese.” Finch turned to look at him, his left eye gone. The crows had taken it, along with much of the flesh from his face, leaving some areas picked so clean that bare bone was visible. 

“Finch.” John had no right to be sad. They’d known all along it would be like this. But he felt the need to do something about the situation. Finch was sagging, and could use some extra support. John scrambled to look through the wooden shelves he clung to, finding his hammer and some nails.

“Mr. Reese, I believe you have work to do elsewhere.”

John broke off pieces from a loose shelf and used them, with the nails, as braces to help secure Finch’s outstretched arms and limp legs to the tower. He tucked Finch’s shirt in to keep more straw from falling out, then tightened the rope around Harold’s torso and neck for good measure, securing him as best he could against gravity and the growing tempest.

“Thank you, John.” A gentle smile with what was left of his lips.

A crow attempted to land on Finch’s shoulder and John shooed it away before it could peck. He reached for his gun at the back of his waistband, but it wasn’t there. Another crow dove toward them, and he swatted it away with a book.

“You can’t stand guard over me all the time,” Finch sighed. “That’s not what I hired you for.”

“So fire me. I’ll still be here.”

“ _They_ matter more.”

“Not to me.”

The tower swayed in the approaching storm’s windy turbulence. John wasn’t sure how much longer it would remain standing.

Finch was quiet for a few moments, gazing across the landscape then down to the ground, dizzyingly far below them. “We knew this wouldn’t last forever.”

“Don’t say that!” John slung an arm around Harold’s chest, holding him tight against himself and the weakening tower.

Finch half-smiled at him sympathetically, blood running anew from his empty eye socket. “All is transient, John. We need to accept it.”

John’s grip was weakening, his dirty, calloused fists trembling as they clutched at their creaking structure. He hoped that Finch couldn’t smell the alcohol on his breath, or the stink of his unwashed body and beard. He didn’t want Finch to see him like that.

He was worthless again.

The tower broke.

\---

Reese awoke just as he began to slump too far to his side, almost falling from his chair but catching himself. His heart was pounding.

He caught sight of Finch’s swollen eye, so dark purple in the low light and shadow that for a moment John thought it been torn out.

A gasp and reality returned to him.

He didn’t want to sit in the chair anymore. It felt precarious to sleep sitting up. He went to the other side of the bed, took off his suit jacket, slipped off his belt and shoes, and lay down next to his employer, his partner, his friend, his everything.

John felt heavy and so tired, though he didn’t want to admit it to himself.

But they were all right. For now.


End file.
